In Guémené-sur-Scorff, just up the road from one of my favourite bars, Aux Sabots Rouge, is Crêperie des Rohan, an everyday place that serves a quiet Breton community. I used to visit Guémené often and would go to the crêperie almost immediately on arrival if it was open (in rural France, you never know – they might be by the river playing boules).
When most people think of crêpes, they probably think of Suzette: the tableside flambéing of Cointreau, butter and sugar in a copper pan, formal white gloves moving to the beat of the flames. I don’t mind Suzette but savoury buckwheat crêpes filled with quality sheets of ham and cheese – 18-month-old winter Comte, please – is, for me, unsurpassable.
If there is a rich egg yolk wobbling in the middle, all the better, but I’m not all that fussed about it being there; in cheaper, less serious places, sometimes it isn’t.
Crêperie des Rohan is not serious. Which is why it is excellent. Though there is sometimes an egg.
And inside, on sturdy wooden chairs in a room so unassuming it hardly exists at all – rural chic in various tones of brown – you will find farmers, boots akimbo; the woman who makes the beautiful ceramics and the man who sells andouillette; wealthy Parisians visiting for a carefree and cow-based weekend; English expats, two of whom own Aux Sabots Rouge; and just about everyone else besides.
Almost all will be eating crêpes, galettes and across tables will be bowls of French chips – flat oblongs, not fries – and frizzy salads, largely undressed. Most will have a jug or two of cider, the locally made Val De Rance, decanted.
It is medium-bodied, not too sweet but not too dry, and it cuts through the nutty, bitter notes of buckwheat and the fat of the Comte.
Or, it matches mushrooms, onions, and smoked lardons; potatoes with bacon, reblochon and crème fraîche; scallops in braised leeks and cream; all manner of cheeses and varieties of pork which are plump inside four carefully folded edges of crêpe; avenues to be explored and devoured while the town flits about slowly outside.
Each takes 15 minutes and each one is an expert piece of craft. While you wait, it is cause to enjoy the smell of frying batter, hear the beating of eggs, and watch others carve haphazardly into sheets of salty, perfumed buckwheat.
It is the utilitarian nature of crêpes, their accessibility – I don’t remember any pushing €10 – and the fact they enjoy French ceremony that I adore. Such a basic dish but one that requires real skill with a pan and the careful balancing of quality ingredients. Put dire ham in a crêpe and you will come to regret it.
Brittany, separate-feeling as it is, has sent crêpes across France – to Bordeaux, to Lyon, to Paris. And thank heavens, because it can’t be Brittany every time. In the capital, where the Olympics are blustering on, there are crêperies all over, each one a haven to gruyère and sausages and fine cream.
There are many crêperies of repute in Paris. I enjoy Breizh Cafe. it is a group run by Bertrand Larcher, a chef from Fougères, not far from Rennes.
He is careful in sourcing ingredients and has ploughed countryside charm into his crêperies, where the butter is generous – it comes from Maison Bordier, which many believe to be gold medal-winning in calibre – and the crêpes earthy and elegant, whether flat and folded, rolled and sliced into two-bite portions, or arranged into triangles.
Breizh Cafe is, of course, an altogether more upmarket affair than des Rohans – for one thing, salmon with goat’s cheese is available, so too lobster with avocado and a miso sauce. There might be less community.
But there is no less spirit, and I would suggest anyone going over to Paris in the next couple of weeks must go and eat at least one. You will return later the same day for dessert.
